SOS: Gear Fix

With the chill in the air, winter is just around the corner. It’s time to break out the snowboard gear to check its status!

The first item you pull out of summer storage is your snowboard. Crap! The base is totally dry! What’s this - rust on the edges? What do you do? 

Check out these solutions from the experts:

Sarah Cameron, the founder of POM POM , a girls wax & accessories company, suggests the following 4-step and go program:

1: First I go after those rusty edges with a gummy stone.  Make sure you wet the stone with some water before you use it, wetting it will help the stone work better when running it back and forth on your edges. The gummy stone helps to loosen & remove the rust while smoothing out any burrs on your edges you got from snagging that rock last season.
2: Then with some base cleaner and an old rag I attack the base and get all of the old wax, dirt & grime out of there. See YA!
3: Now it’s time to put that base back in it’s place. I bust open some all temp POM POM wax and crank up that old iron because it’s time to hot wax. Hot waxing several times a season (vs. just rub-on wax alone) is really really important for your base. When bases get dry they get white, fuzzy & slow just like your skin. When you hot wax you open up the pores in your base and get that wax where it needs to be for super sliding action.
4: This is the final stage. Once my base has cooled a bit I’ll take my POM POM scraper and remove the excess wax and then buff it to a shine with a scotch brite pad. I also like to flip my board over and remove the bindings and clean the topsheet. You may not notice but a lot of dirt and grime gets trapped under there. It’s a good time to go through your bindings to make sure all of the bolts, screws and adjustments are tight. Finally I’ll clean off my stickers and do a new sticker job to make my board feel new again, bolt my bindings back on and then strap on for a nice romp around the room. Then I take my board off, stand it in the corner and stare at it in anticipation of my first day out for the season.

Avran Lefeber of angrysnowboarder.com , prefers the mystical route:

Well as most mere mortals would be mortified at the sight of rust and a dry base I just laugh. I have a multi step program to fixing these issues. Step one jib rocks, not only does it remove rust but it adds a real deep structure to your base if you know what I mean. Step 2 jib a Unicorn and make it cry, cause Unicorn tears have magical properties that make you go super fast. Now some people might say Unicorns don’t exist - blasphemy! They do - every girl on the Roxy team owns one! I heard that Torah even owns a Pegasus but that’s another story for another time. Step three is a bit harder and really for those that are desperate. Find a rainbow follow it to the end, beat up a Leprechaun and steal his gold. That way you can just buy a new board every time your deck looks like ass!

Aside from unicorns and rainbows, Avran suggests that if the board is ”...really dry and rusty take it to the local shop and get a full tune which will include a base and edge grind topped off with a hot wax.” Easy enough, right?

Jessica Linsky, owner of snowbunny snowboards,  also recommends waxing the board, but doing so twice:

I don’t care about my edges too much, but I do enjoy a good base.  If my base was bone-dry, the first thing I would do is apply a heavy coat of wax.  After it dried completely, I would scrape it all off, which is annoying, but necessary.   Next, I would wax again, this time using Spanie’s Special Waxing Method (Spanie is my fiance/snowboard guru)
 
With this method, instead of using the iron to drip wax onto your board, you just briefly touch the bar of wax to the iron, then rub the warmed wax directly into your base.  Once your base is lightly covered with wax, use the iron to smooth it out, then dry, and scrape as usual.  This uses way less wax then the traditional method, and also gives you better results. 

Don’t have a gummy stone? AASI instructor Jason Chrzan offers an alternative in his solution to this gear dilemma:

First, I would find the lightest grade steel wool and remove the the surface rust off the edges.  It should only be surface rust as its only been sitting for a few months, if its more then you have pitted edges and need a machine edge grind or a good set of tuning tools.

After the surface rust is removed I would find my trusty all natural citrus base cleaner - not Daddy’s turpentine jug out in the garage.  Citrus based cleaner, like fruits - citrus only. Now time for base rub rub.  Just scrub down the base a bunch of times with a nice rag.  I like the micro fiber ones people use on their cars because they are non-abrasive and only cost $5 at Autozone or Wal-mart.  Scrub scrub until no more gunk comes off. You can heat your base slightly to help it clean easier, but then you have to monitor surface temps and it’s more of a hassle… just scrub more.

After a good cleaning the edges are ready to be tuned followed by a new, so-fresh-and-so-clean wax.

Finally, I caress my board, put it in seductive poses and take scandalous pictures of it. That way if it ever betrays me during the season I can post the pics of that cheating floozy!

 

Posted by Sara on 09/11